How Much Does a Website Redesign Cost in the UK? Real 2026 Prices

Most businesses asking about redesign costs already have the hard part: a live website, an audience, and a clear feeling that the site is no longer doing its job. What they cannot find is a straight answer on the price, because "redesign" covers everything from repainting a solid site to rebuilding one from the foundations, and most pricing pages blur the two.

So here are the real bands we quote in, what places a project at the bottom or top of each, and the line items that catch businesses out because they have nothing to do with how the site looks.

What counts as a redesign, and what is really a rebuild?

The word gets used for three different projects, and the price differences between them are large enough that this is the first thing to pin down.

A refresh keeps your platform, structure and most of your content, and updates the design layer: layout, typography, colour, imagery, and usually a pass over the copy. A full redesign rethinks the site properly on the platform you already have: new structure, new page designs, rewritten content, but the engine underneath stays. A replatform is a new build wearing a redesign's name: the design changes and so does everything under it, because the old platform is the thing holding the site back.

If you are not sure which yours is, our guide on whether your website needs a refresh or a rebuild walks through the decision, and what a website redesign involves covers the process end to end. The short version: the further down that list your project sits, the closer the price gets to a new website.

How much does a website redesign cost in the UK?

These are 2026 agency bands, consistent with the pricing in our UK website cost guide, because a redesign at the deeper end is priced as what it is: a new build with a head start.

Three honest notes on reading the table. First, replatforming a small brochure-scale site sits at the bottom of its band or below it: as our cost guide covers, a rebuild of a cheaply built first website typically runs £3,000 to £5,000. Second, regional pricing is real: the same full redesign quoted at £12,000 by a central London studio is routinely £5,000 to £6,000 from an agency outside the capital, with no difference in the quality of the work. And third, the bottom of the refresh band buys design changes, not miracles: if the site is slow, hard to edit or invisible on Google for structural reasons, a £1,500 refresh will make those problems prettier rather than solve them.

Why does a redesign sometimes cost as much as a new website?

Because sometimes it is one. In our experience a good share of the projects that arrive as "redesigns" turn out, once we look under the bonnet, to need more than the design layer changed: the platform is outdated or locked down, the content structure fights what the business now sells, or the site was built in a way that cannot be safely extended. At that point the honest quote is a rebuild quote, and an agency that prices it as a light refresh is planning to have an awkward conversation with you in month two.

There is also work in a redesign that a brand-new website never has to do. A new site starts from nothing; a redesign starts from something that is live, indexed by Google, linked to from other websites and bookmarked by customers. Carrying all of that across safely is real work, which brings us to the line items people do not see coming.

Which line items catch people out?

The visible design work is usually the most predictable part of a redesign quote. These are the parts that move the price, and they are worth asking any agency about directly:

• Redirects and rankings protection. If page addresses change, every old address needs mapping to its new home with permanent redirects, or the Google rankings your site has earned leak away. Google's own site-move documentation describes the process; budget for it whenever your page structure changes. We have done this work on our own site as well as client sites, and it is the least visible, most valuable line on the quote.
• Content. Rewriting pages takes longer than restyling them, and it is the single most common cause of both delays and cost overruns. If the quote assumes you are supplying finished copy and you are not, the real price is higher than the paper price.
• Integrations. Booking systems, payment providers, CRMs, stock feeds: each one has to be reconnected and retested on the new site. Simple on paper, time-consuming in practice.
• Analytics and tracking. Goals, events and conversion tracking are usually configured against old page addresses and need rebuilding, or you will spend the first three months of the new site unable to tell whether it is working.
• Photography and brand assets. A redesigned site wearing five-year-old photography undoes part of what you paid for. Not always needed, but when it is, it belongs in the budget rather than as a surprise.

Is a redesign worth it, or should you start again?

The commercial maths matters more than the design itch. Orbit Media's lifespan research is telling here for its spread rather than its average: top marketing brands redesign after around two years, while well-built, well-maintained sites serve for six or more. That matches what we see: how soon a site earns a serious revisit depends less on its age than on how well it was built, and on how far the business has outgrown the story its site tells.

Foundations decide it. A well-built site on the right platform can be refreshed twice and keep serving for years, which is the cheapest path there is. A site on the wrong platform is the opposite case: money spent refreshing it is money spent decorating a building you are about to leave. Our refresh or rebuild guide walks you through that triage symptom by symptom, and it is worth twenty minutes before you brief anyone.

Can you phase a redesign instead of paying for it all at once?

Often, yes, and it is worth asking any agency about, because the all-at-once quote is not the only shape a redesign can take.

The natural phasing follows the layers of the site. A first phase handles what customers see and what the business feels fastest: the pages that win work, redesigned and rewritten. A second phase extends the new design across the rest of the site. Deeper work, a platform move or new integrations, can sit as its own project once the visible layer has proven itself. Phasing spreads the cost across quarters rather than landing it in one invoice, and each phase pays something back before the next begins.

The other route is ongoing: some businesses fold redesign work into a monthly retainer, improving the site section by section rather than in one project at all. Our growth retainers work this way. The one thing phasing cannot rescue is a site whose platform is the problem: there is no sensible way to replatform in instalments, which is why the refresh-or-rebuild triage comes before any budgeting decision.

How do you keep a redesign budget under control?

Three things, all decided before design starts.

Agree what stays. The cheapest parts of any redesign are the parts you keep: pages that convert, content that ranks, photography that still looks right. A good agency will tell you what is worth keeping rather than quoting to replace everything, and it is a useful test of who you are talking to.

Fix the scope of content. Decide who is writing what before the project is priced, not during it. Supplied, rewritten or written from scratch are three different budgets.

Name the real deadline. Redesigns priced against a real date, a launch, a season, an event, get scoped tightly. Open-ended projects drift, and drift costs money.

Want a straight answer on your own site?

Send us your current website and what it needs to do for the business, and we will tell you plainly which of the three projects it needs: a refresh, a full redesign, or a rebuild, with a real price for each. Sometimes the answer is the cheaper one, and we would rather tell you that than sell you the bigger project. See how we approach web design, or get in touch for the honest version.